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viewing 1 To 25 of 39 items
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CIRCA 414CD
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The Preservation label presents Neverended, the debut full-length album from Dusted Lux. The project of Connecticut-based Lee Camfield, he has appeared as Dusted Lux on the artist-run Kim Dawn and No Kings labels, where his shorter releases welded crunching textures and hazy ambience in a curiously soulful resolve. On Neverended, Camfield adds song-form to shape the signature drift of his guitar-playing into bare-boned acoustic folk and against melted sound waves and fractured beats. His voice enters the fray for the first time, lending a plaintive touch to the spooked beauty that defines this diverse, idiosyncratic record. A sunny, jangly strum unwinds from "What Is True"'s shrouding sonic fog -- disarming, bare and tender -- while elsewhere, "A Horse in the Orchard" approaches something close to Dirty Three's floating and shimmering streams and "Adrift" is both a glowing and ghostly atmosphere. This raw set is a jigsaw of feeling, and its sense of movement is vital and ever-pulsing -- such is the searching heart of Neverended that ultimately gives it its compelling focus.
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CIRCA 314CD
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The Preservation label presents the first full-length work from German artist Günter Schlienz. For a decade, Schlienz has created meditative works of epic reach with intimate, reflective resonance. His individual style comes from an ever-searching sense of experimentalism that stems not only from his sense of composition but his creation of his own modular synthesizers and other instruments. Contemplation is Schlienz's most personal work yet, acting as a compendium that ties the various strands of his musical pursuits together with a new and fresh vision. In a way, Contemplation is a record of how he has developed as an artist and as himself. While the cosmic touch is ever-present across the album, earthy and pastoral scenes are never far from Schlienz's gaze. Norm Chambers aka Panabrite, a kindred spirit, contributes to the swelling, soaring "Humble," "Numb" is bubbling and bucolic in feel, and "Shimmer" is a soft, sweet paen to the evening. Reaching further, "Lament" is a majestic drone, raga-like in its deep focus, and "Janitor" is a final, hazy delight of floating tones and starry, dub-like echoes. Ultimately, Contemplation is in equal thrall to joy, melancholy, nature and space. It's a radiant poise Schlienz holds throughout, finding a peaceful plane. Limited to 300 copies only.
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CIRCA 114CD
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The Preservation label presents Black Coral Sprig, the debut full-length album from Talk West. Talk West is the project of Tulsa, Oklahoma resident Dylan Aycock. Aycock has forged a small series of intriguing and beautiful missives through the cassette underground with his explorations on guitar. On Black Coral Sprig, Aycock negotiates the terrain between stately and homely by stretching a ringing country tone into an all-encompassing atmosphere, much like the ambient realms of Stars Of The Lid. His unhurried, gentle playing style comes to reveal understated textures that weave into a whole that is alternately spirited, warming and often haunting. It's a singular style reminiscent of Loren Connor's astral-blues and Bruce Langhorne's famed soundtrack for The Hired Hand, which, tellingly, was reissued in 2012 on Aycock's own Scissor Tail Editions. These spectral, cinematic soundscapes are a future vision of the guitar's past. Black Coral Sprig is the first work in Preservation's limited edition series called Circa for 2014, unearthing and unifying underground artists. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a unique design by Mark Gowing. Each design realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed, random and unified across the entire series. Limited to 300 copies only.
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CIRCA 214CD
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The Preservation label presents Sun Showers, the debut full-length album from Matthew Barlow. Inspired by porch life living in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina, Sun Showers has a simple aim in its warm and abstract take on the passing of a day, and it's sweetly rendered with compelling resonance. Shrouded in foggy ambience and cut with synth echoes, shuffling rhythms and field recordings, Barlow's muscular and hypnotic guitar sits at the core of this magnetic quartet of pieces as well as giving it their edge and force. Switching to piano is a point of calm in Sun Showers' insistent pulse, and the heightened mood-states Barlow creates are bracing, reflective and wholly immersive overall. Sun Showers was originally released as a very limited two-track set on cassette and has been expanded for this release. Barlow also runs the Twin Springs Tapes label. Sun Showers is the second work in Preservation's limited edition series called Circa for 2014, unearthing and unifying underground artists. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a unique design by Mark Gowing. Each design realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed, random and unified across the entire series. Limited to 300 copies only.
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PRE 038CD
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The Preservation label presents Hiraeth, the fourth album from Hampshire, UK's Olan Mill. The work of composer and instrumentalist Alex Smalley and following on from 2012's much-acclaimed Home, Olan Mill continues to seek a higher plane of consciousness through grand and textured composition. Variously compared to the likes of Richard Skelton, Maurice Jarre and Vangelis, where Home sought to essay the life-affirming, worldly joy of travel, Hiraeth is a movingly yearning work for a lost sense of place. A Welsh word with no direct translation in English, Hiraeth is defined as homesickness for a home to which you cannot return. This is a beautiful meditation on nature irretrievably lost over time and as The Liminal wrote on Home: "Smalley can rightly be added to the list of successful composers who've managed to not only be inspired by nature, but accurately communicate it as well." With the resonance of folk melody through lilting piano and guitar and the symphonic reach of strings and soprano voice, the deep focus of Hiraeth is revealed through both intimate detail and sweeping revelations of sound. Whether through a pursuit of travel or the changing face of his native surrounds, Smalley conveys the momentum of transition through the surge and flow of his music with unerring force. Hiraeth is released in both vinyl and CD editions with each having different cover art.
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PRE 037LP
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The Preservation label presents Reflections of Most Forgotten Love, the third album from Los Angeles' Deep Magic. The solo project for current Sun Araw live band member Alex Gray, Deep Magic's work has tended towards a meditative ambient realm, crafting a cosmic sound described by Uncut as having "a sort of calm and organic grandeur that recalls Popol Vuh." Indeed like Popol Vuh, pursuit of a kind of spiritual grace has proven to be the measure at the heart of Deep Magic. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love finds a new urgency, an ever-shifting puzzle of sound that breathes vital new life into Gray's lyrical vision. Dynamic and unrelenting, yet somehow beautifully spacious and patient in its unfolding, this epic work thrives on equal parts pulse and poise, an essence held within a thrilling multiplicity of ideas. Skittish techno, rolling pianos, warm pedal steel, foggy dub drifts and microscopic sonics play out a hypnotic movement of moods with magnetic compulsion. Throughout its stirring, blissful way, intimacy is its keynote. As the title suggests, this is an album of emotively raw presence with a singular take on solitude as a many-splendored thing.
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PRE 037CD
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The Preservation label presents Reflections of Most Forgotten Love, the third album from Los Angeles' Deep Magic. The solo project for current Sun Araw live band member Alex Gray, Deep Magic's work has tended towards a meditative ambient realm, crafting a cosmic sound described by Uncut as having "a sort of calm and organic grandeur that recalls Popol Vuh." Indeed like Popol Vuh, pursuit of a kind of spiritual grace has proven to be the measure at the heart of Deep Magic. Reflections of Most Forgotten Love finds a new urgency, an ever-shifting puzzle of sound that breathes vital new life into Gray's lyrical vision. Dynamic and unrelenting, yet somehow beautifully spacious and patient in its unfolding, this epic work thrives on equal parts pulse and poise, an essence held within a thrilling multiplicity of ideas. Skittish techno, rolling pianos, warm pedal steel, foggy dub drifts and microscopic sonics play out a hypnotic movement of moods with magnetic compulsion. Throughout its stirring, blissful way, intimacy is its keynote. As the title suggests, this is an album of emotively raw presence with a singular take on solitude as a many-splendored thing.
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CIRCA 512CD
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The Preservation label presents Home, the third album from Olan Mill from Hampshire in the United Kingdom. Olan Mill is the recording project of composer and producer Alex Smalley, who to-date has received rapturous acclaim for his work that holds a sublime measure between the realms of modern neo-classical composition and ambience. On Home, Smalley has mined his most expansive territory yet to create a thrillingly evocative and deeply felt body of work. The tender clusters of sound that have defined Olan Mill's tonal space take on a new soaring quality in using voice to propel Home with a new emotional surge. Alongside soprano Patricia Boynton featuring throughout, Smalley has assembled an ensemble of musicians playing woodwind, piano, pipe organ and violin to augment his guitar and field recordings. Together they combine for both moments of heart-rending intimacy and bursts of flowering, floating orchestral sound. Inspired by travels abroad, Home is a both an urban and exotic panorama, keening with waves of joyous energy and direct pulse, as well as the ultimate comedown from such pure euphoria. Recorded by Smalley in his home -- a place lived in by his family in generations past -- the album has an earthy air that magically weaves through its otherworldly radiance to portray the compelling dynamic at the heart of Olan Mill. Home is the fifth work in Preservation's limited edition CD series Preservation called "Circa for 2012." Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design is realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed, random and unified across the entire series.
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CIRCA 612CD
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The Preservation label presents Burnt Offerings, the fourth album from Brooklyn's Padna. As Padna, Nat Hawks initially made his name in the cassette underground on the revered Stunned label with two works of pop experimentalism displaying a bustling -- often boggling -- and vivid imagination. Veritable joyrides in sound and style, these releases were in line with the DIY aesthetic, primitive songcraft and eclectic sonic stew pioneered by the likes of Tall Dwarfs and forwarded by Olivia Tremor Control, though with an even more exploratory skew. Burnt Offerings is a mellower, simpler counterpart to those earlier works, but still elastic and ever expanding in its peculiar pursuit of the transcendental. Making up its sweet, song-oriented meditations through a hazy circle of intoned psychedelia, drone, bedroom folk and dub filters, these tracks roam from kaleidoscopic melody, slowly loping with a whimsical way to a contrasting, shadowy elegance for murkier intent. Burnt Offerings' oddly charming spectrum -- built on acoustic guitar, vintage synths, electric violin, toys, objects and a dizzying array of effects -- is by turns romantic, melancholic, curious and always full of heart. Burnt Offerings is the sixth and final work in Preservation's limited edition series Preservation called "Circa for 2012." Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design is realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed, random and unified across the entire series.
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PRE 035CD
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The Preservation label presents Slay Me in My Sleep, the sixth album from Melbourne's Grand Salvo. Under the guise of Grand Salvo, Paddy Mann has established himself as a songwriter of unique heart and soul with a depth of lyricism matched by warm but widescreen musical vision. 2009's Soil Creatures sealed his reputation, being his most stark and concise statement yet. With Slay Me in My Sleep, Mann has returned to familiar territory, writing a parable as song cycle similar to his epic fairytale from 2008, Death. An evocation of time and memory, it is a tale of star-crossed lovers. A delinquent boy breaks into an old woman's home and discovers an antique photo of a girl. He instantly falls in love. After the old woman scares him off, though, he eventually returns, consumed and obsessed by the girl in the photo. The old woman is waiting, and so it begins. It is a lavishly decorated and unabashed romantic melodrama, set to exquisite strings (cello, violin and harp), dancing woodwinds and searching brass. Within these gorgeous orchestrations, tracing around the folk song idiom are intimate narratives of unqualified affection and compelling emotion. Slay Me in My Sleep also marks the first use of an electric guitar in any Grand Salvo recording. Slay Me in My Sleep was largely recorded and co-produced in Berlin by composer Nils Frahm, who has worked extensively with similarly singular artists such as Peter Broderick and Greg Haines. His masterful piano-playing appears throughout, alongside vocal contributions by Heather Woods Broderick, Laura Jean and Luluc's Zoe Randall. After the masterful Soil Creatures, Paddy Mann has once extended himself on Slay Me in My Sleep, telling a tale of strange love with vivid detail, whimsy and beauty, in a special way only he knows how.
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CIRCA 112CD
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The Preservation label presents the fourth album from Sydney's Seaworthy. Seaworthy is the musical guise of Cameron Webb, who, for the best part of a decade, has developed singular soundscapes scored with guitar-driven ambience, field recording and digital processing. In recent years, Webb has recorded to acclaim for the esteemed 12K label, releasing the 1897 album in 2009 followed by a collaboration with Matt Rösner, Two Lakes. His compositions reflect his deep connection to environment and nature; each piece often feels like a journey through beautiful, untethered terrain. For Bellows And Breath, Webb has explored a different terrain of his own, paring back his trademark guitar to build a work based largely around harmonium, melodica and found sounds. By way of its title, Bellows And Breath is a new side to Webb's sonic meditations on movement, air and its interaction with the environment. The pure rhythmic hiss and crackle of the harmonium's bellows proved the inspiration for the way Webb played the harmonium itself, becoming an unforced undertow to a set of bowing chords that invoke an open spirit in their composition and measure. Spare and fluid acoustic guitar intermittently reflects off these surfaces, also layered by combinations of melodica, incidental rushes of wind through grass and distant sounds of birds, insects and more. Finding a more direct and urgent pulse in his work, this may be Webb once again in sentiment with nature, however, Bellows And Breath represents a bold new step in his special and personal trajectory. Bellows And Breath is the first work in Preservation's limited edition CD series called "Circa" for 2012. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design is realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed and random. New design and color template in 2012 for all releases. Packaged in beautiful paper stock.
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CIRCA 212CD
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The Preservation label presents Grandfather Harmonic, the new full-length album from Sparkling Wide Pressure. The alter ego of Murfreesboro, Tennessee's Frank Baugh, Sparkling Wide Pressure has drawn from a seemingly infinite well of sonic inspiration to record at an incredible rate since 2008, having his work appear on labels such as Digitalis, Stunned, Housecraft and Students Of Decay. This transfixing entry into his weighty catalog pinpoints Baugh's increasing fascination with song-forms couched within abstract spaces. These mesmeric pieces revolve on a constant teetering between melody and abrasion, sharing kinship with classic post-punk primitivism as much as today's field of synth-wielding trance phasers. Through layered synth tones that uncoil like long, clear breaths and hypnotic percussion, pivotal to the essence of Sparkling Wide Pressure is Baugh's rangy guitar-playing. Baugh can execute walls of enveloping ambience to encompass soft, gentle ruminations laced with smoky mood and subterfuge or take a more urgent tone, forging an otherworldly pulse that never loses the visceral thrill and pull that proves the magnetic core of this work. Thematically, Grandfather Harmonic revolves around Baugh's connection to his childhood home deep in the woods of rural Tennessee and memories of his grandfather, specifically, the rich tones of the harmonica he once played. In its own curious, searching way, Grandfather Harmonic is a remembrance of place and time from a truly atypical imagination. Grandfather Harmonic is the second work in Preservation's limited edition CD series called "Circa" for 2012. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available and will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design is realized using an abstract alphabet that creates an interlocking grid, determined by artist and volume number for something both fixed and random. New design and color template in 2012 for all releases. Packaged in beautiful paper stock and part of a unified series.
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PRE 033CD
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The Preservation label presents Valot Kaukaa, the second album from Finnish producer Olli Aarni. Valot Kaukaa is the first work for Aarni under a new name, Nuojuva, having previously appeared under the name Ous Mal. As Ous Mal, Aarni's 2010 debut album, Nuojuva Halava took the early promise of his CD-R releases into a beautiful realization of a unique sound that evoked both a curious nostalgia and a sense of future pathways, combining classical overtures, narcotic beats and warm atmospherics into blissful song. Aarni's beguiling vision holds sparer focus on Valot Kaukaa (the title roughly translates as "lights from far away") for a more overtly ambient space filled with delicate instrumentation -- including cello, piano, flute and violin -- as well as a new interest in the possibilities of voice. Spacey and intimate with wintry and autumnal shades, its whispered melodies and open drift making for a heightened state still somehow grounded in down-home feeling. The gliding vocal textures of Rachel Evans aka Motion Sickness Of Time Travel as well as one-half of duo Quiet Evenings -- is a recurring highlight, while Sophie Hutchings' dazzling, rolling piano propels Laakso into a wonderful orbit. Honing a special path explored on Nuojuva Halava, Valot Kaukaa feels like one long, suspended, beautiful moment. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi.
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CIRCA 611CD
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The Preservation label presents Light Poured Out Of Our Bones, the debut for the pairing of Aaron Martin and Justin Wright. Aaron Martin is a multi-instrumentalist who has previously recorded three acclaimed albums on Preservation; Almond, River Water and Chautauqua. He has developed an idiosyncratic, singular and engaging style with his electro-acoustic compositions tracing an arc for a new kind of Americana steeped in cinematic ambience and alien wonder. Justin Wright is better known as Expo '70. As Expo '70, Wright has a long string of recordings dedicated to pursuing extended meditations for solo guitar that draw upon Krautrock, drone and space exploration. In blooding their collaboration on tape, recording Light Poured Out Of Our Bones at Wright's home studio in Kansas City, Missouri, Martin and Wright combine for a work set deep with epic, foreboding resonance. Angling between wired and taut guitar serrations and slithering, loping synth textures mingling with cello, organ, banjo, singing bowls and voice, these pieces trip out on their own psychedelic reverie with a dark kind of ecstasy. Compelling and hypnotic, this is music conjuring strange dream sensations to wholly succumb to. Light Poured Out Of Our Bones is the sixth and final work in the limited edition CD series from Preservation called Circa for 2011. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available, featuring a design by Mark Gowing. Each design for 2011 will be realized using a specially-created abstract alphabet of shapes, determined by artist, title and catalog number for something both fixed and random. Circa will return in 2012 with a new design model.
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CIRCA 511CD
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The Preservation label presents the second album from New York's Nickolas Mohanna. Also working as a visual artist, Nickolas draws unique forms from the wealth of sounds found in New York's complex sprawl and imbues them with feeling and subtlety. The sounds on Reflectors buzz with rich detail and rhythmic interplay for a work alive with beauty and mystery in its atmospheric reach. Previously living in San Francisco for a number of years, Nickolas studied with noted electronic composer Bob Ostertag, whose use of sampling and tape manipulation informs his own work considerably. Thinking of Reflectors' pieces as "tone poems," Nickolas juxtaposes field recordings with guitar and synthesizer treatments to refract the natural world through sci-fi vision. Finding the ground between the concrète and cosmic in summoning a curious, compelling aura throughout, Reflectors is a fascinating step in exploratory music's ongoing dialogue between now and then. Reflectors is the fifth and penultimate work in the limited edition CD series from Preservation called Circa for 2011. Only 300 copies of each release in the series will be available, featuring a design by Mark Gowing. Each design for 2011 will be realized using a specially-created abstract alphabet of shapes, determined by artist, title and catalog number for something both fixed and random. Circa will return in 2012 with a new design model. Mastered by James Plotkin.
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The Preservation label presents the debut album from Sydney's The Singing Skies, the songwriting project for musician Kell Derrig-Hall. His first solo venture, Kell has previously contributed to records and live performances for the likes of Jack Ladder, Rand And Holland and Seaworthy. On Routine And War, Kell stands front and center with a presence built on old-school simplicity. Spare, disarming and open, these songs flower slowly with plaintive guitar at their core, often with a country lilt or a spellbinding, serpentine feel. Kell's stark and soulful voice is buoyed by the achingly beautiful harmonies of Lia Tsamoglu, who also provides warm, enveloping keyboard sounds throughout. Now otherwise known as pop artist Melodie Nelson, Lia is Kell's long-term partner and collaborator, the pair previously engaging in more experimental realms as Moonmilk. Also integral to Routine And War are its string arrangements -- both stirring and touching -- from Biddy Connor, (Laura Jean, Grand Salvo) lifting and weaving through lyrics that by turns prove haunting, piercing and gentle in spirit. Other guests include Laura Jean on piano and Laura Jean band percussionist Jen Sholakis. Routine And War was recorded by Simon Grounds in Melbourne, who also produced the seminal early works from Underground Lovers as well as albums by Grand Salvo and Laura Jean. In balancing subtlety with passion, Routine And War finds a rare poignancy. It is a delicate, intimate and most affecting debut. Mastered by renowned Italian composer Giuseppe Ielasi.
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The Preservation label presents the debut full-length album from Milwaukee, Wisconsin's Black Eagle Child. Black Eagle Child is the guise for guitarist Michael Jantz. Jantz has previously released an expansive body of work, sprawling across some of the most notable underground labels of the current day, including Stunned, Housecraft and Digitalis. His solo recordings work a realm of exploratory zones for guitar that touch on the discordant, psychedelic and pastoral, while also deploying varied percussion and field recordings for texture and rhythm. That journey continues with Lobelia, though in its expansive scope, it's played for pure songcraft and resonant beauty. Lobelia can take a breezy pace but is deep with feeling throughout. Glistening pieces such as "Paper Delivery" unravel with an unashamedly wistful air, warmly redolent of the day's wake, while others such as "Goodbye House" cast starrier atmospheres and a more mysterious kind of grace in their way. It's the perfect combination for a work that reflects on Jantz's growing up in the rural idylls surrounding Lake Michigan. The album's title comes from the name of a native flower Jantz's mother would use as a cure-all remedy when he was younger. Coming full circle now, Jantz has recently seen the birth of his own, child, a daughter. It's her cooing on "I Forgot" that Jantz uses as another texture in weaving together a meditative portrait of family and the environs that can make it at once both unique and universal. Rounded off by the rustic banjo of "Families Get Together," these poignant, sometimes sepia-tinted pieces place a gentle eye on the future. Sweet and enigmatic, Lobelia finds a musical place befitting of such an ideal. It is as evocative as it is lovely. Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. New Preservation standard packaging of slimline raw finish cardboard.
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CIRCA 211CD
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The Preservation label presents Map Of Circular Thought from Providence, Rhode Island's Area C. Area C is the music project for composer and multi-media artist Erik Carlson. Carlson has recently completed the soundtrack to a National Geographic documentary on New Orleans in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and has worked on several projects for NASA's Space Grant Consortium along with numerous audio, multi-media and public art installations. Map Of Circular Thought follows several acclaimed works including 2009's The Planetarium Project, described by The Wire magazine as "inspiring." Map Of Circular Thought is a set of meditative, contemplative pieces -- a sonic rendering of the connection between memory and the present. Using minimal rhythm and melody to form constellations of fixed tones, these compositions burst with flickering sonic detail to create constant flux among the patterns he creates. The warm, analog sounds on Map Of Circular Thought -- made using guitar, organ, keyboard and a drum machine -- engage and play with states of consciousness in listening, and in particular found inspiration in the abstract dreamscapes of UK electronic pioneers Seefeel. Carlson also traces a line back to minimalist composers Terry Riley and Steve Reich, and shares a kinship with the transfixing qualities of more recent acolytes such as William Basinski and Philip Jeck. Map Of Circular Thought mainlines to the mind but is also a visceral, tingling thrill for the ears. This album is the second in a new limited edition CD series from Preservation called Circa. 300 copies only will be available of each release in the series and each will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design will be realized using a specially-created abstract alphabet of shapes, determined by artist, title and catalog number for something both fixed and random.
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CIRCA 111CD
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The Preservation label presents Stand Before Me, Oh My Soul from Italian composer Fabio Orsi. Fabio's prolific output has had him heralded as a master of modern ambience, creating rich, freeform atmospheres with organic instrumentation and processed sounds. Though known for momentous pieces of hypnotic power, this work marks a dynamic new turn in Fabio's sound. The force of his composition takes more of an overt stance on Stand Before Me, Oh My Soul. The raw and primal pulse at the heart of his music is writ large here with a punk mind-set, unleashing a heady mass of guitars against a backdrop of cavernous, shimmering distortion and crashing drums (courtesy of Rich Baker, who also performs regularly with Nadja's Aidan Baker). It also boasts a bristling sense of lysergic, hazy melody. Brutal and glimmering, dark and beautiful, Stand Before Me, Oh My Soul drops loud and large in pursuit of pure, dissonant bliss. This is the first in a new limited edition CD series from Preservation called Circa. 300 copies only will be available of each release in the series and each will feature a design by Mark Gowing. Each design will be realized using a specially-created abstract alphabet of shapes, determined by artist, title and catalog number for something both fixed and random.
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This is the debut album from Helsinki, Finland's Ous Mal. Ous Mal is the recording project of Olli Aarni. With previous CD-R releases for both Finland's 267-Lattajjaa and the UK's Under The Spire, Ous Mal has already gained notice for his expansive sound, further developed in widescreen on Nuojuva Halava. Finding common ground between the dusty tenor of old-school hip-hop cassettes and the fog of deep ambience as a base, the music of Ous Mal also takes on an ingrained influence of traditional Finnish folk for an epic, otherworldly take on sound and song. These atmospheric pieces can slowly swell into ecstasy or settle into hazy shades and spring into moments of joyful pop abandon. That line back to tradition -- with some pieces using the age-old Finnish stringed-instrument, kantele and others drawing from old Finnish hymnal albums -- makes for a lyrical imagery that evokes an elusive sense of place. It's a sound with the lingering presence of the past but with one eye set firmly on taking it into the future. Roughly translated, "nuojuva halava" means "swaying bay willow." The way things in nature change through time and surroundings is a recurring inspiration for Olli's music, heard especially in the way he often takes his textures towards compelling points of decay. UK artist Jenkins conceived the images for Nuojuva Halava's artwork, creating free-falling geometric shapes against backdrops of epic spaces to connect perfectly with the music packaged within. Nuojuva Halava creates a picture of great scope in its colliding of ideas into kindred spirits, arriving at a zone that's bold and blissful as it is personal. Mastered by renown Italian composer Giuseppe Ielasi (Pimmon, Heather Woods Broderick).
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2006 release. The Preservation label presents the self-titled debut album from Melbourne's Post. Post is the solo guise of James Wilkinson, who has gleefully cracked the ground between free jazz and punk in Bucketrider and made sonic cinema with the electro-dub-hip-hop fusion of High Pass Filter. He's also provided innovative sound design for the internationally-acclaimed puppet theater company Snuff Puppets, and it's his adventurous spirit that runs free through Post's pop persona. Post's playful but stirring sense of composition makes for a set where bouncy dancefloor-bound fun, retro-futurist funk, space-y jazz noir and ambient atmospheres face-off at fizzing tangents. Strings, guitars, recorders and piano on the album were recorded at David Bridie's studio The Enormodome, with further creating, recording and mixing taking place at Wilkinson's own Wilkinsound studio. The final mixes were done with François Tétaz, who has worked on remixes for Aphex Twin and composed the soundtrack for Australian film Wolf Creek (2005). The array of collaborators also includes renowned experimenters Anthony Pateras (piano), Robin Fox (electronics) and drummer Steve Heather (drums). For all its smarts, Post is the sound of a man in love with the worlds of sonics and song, and therein lies its warm, immediate appeal. Limited edition special package design.
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..Interpretation. Saddleback is the solo project of producer Tony Dupé. In many ways, with its warm and exploratory craft, 2004's Everything's A Love Letter was the culmination of the varying strands in Tony's musical life contained in one special debut. Tony first came to notice in Glovebox, who put an ethereal, ambient twist on the indie-pop scene as far back as the early '90s. Glovebox's swirling sound has been as unhurried as its release schedule, though no matter how spare their output, each album has always found a warm reception. The group were even invited to make a record with U.S. independent music luminary Kramer, who at the time had already produced records for the likes of Low, Palace Brothers and Galaxie 500. As time went on, Tony would tinker with the Glovebox sound by using a rotating group of players with each recording and eventually started to produce records himself and sow the seeds for Saddleback. Tony moved into an old disused nunnery on the South Coast of NSW and into production, fashioning a recording studio within the huge 18-bedroom building. As Saddleback, Dupé had unanchored his atmospheric musings from Glovebox's pop roots into new territory. Everything's A Love Letter unfolds with small sonic gestures and gradually shifting layers of quiet sound, its fluttering, winding arrangements building into something altogether mesmerizing. Blending guitar, piano, strings and brass into its mild electronic realm brings up compelling dimensions between classic composition and abstraction -- a tender melodicism that draws on jazz, folk, pop and ambient electronica. His affecting style brought many plaudits, furthered by the release of Saddleback's second album Night Maps. This reissue edition features interpretations of five of the original tracks from acclaimed Preservation artists Aaron Martin, Grand Salvo, Post, Early Songs and Richard Skelton. They add to an already fascinating and beautiful listen. Deluxe packaging in a unique design.
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PRE 007CD
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2005 release. The Preservation label presents Unknown Music II - Transwarp Meditation, from Steffen Basho-Junghans. The passion for exploratory acoustic music has been with Steffen Basho-Junghans for a long time. Based in Berlin, Steffen has been one of the most searching artists in the ever-increasingly loose folk idiom for over two decades. His work on the six and twelve-string guitar makes him a modern-day counterpart to great trail-blazers John Fahey and Robbie Basho, from whom he takes his name as a creative talisman. While experimentation is a feature of Steffen's playing, the soul of acoustic guitar tradition is there in equal measure. With boundless imagination, his technique takes in American folk, Eastern raga and Western classical harmonics but also resonates with the inspiring power of free jazz. His Unknown Music series features what he describes as his most personal excursions yet, containing some of his most stirring and unique compositions. While some pieces are relentlessly intense, there's an undeniable beauty at their core, found as equally in those that curl out with complex, but softer melodic measure. The percussive qualities of his sound heighten its hypnotic feel in a space created from, and for, pure feeling above all. Unknown Music II is much more than just a set of psychedelic overtures. It's a work of deep spiritual vision that comes from having travelled far down an exceptionally individual path.
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PRE 011CD
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2007 release. Saddleback is the solo project of producer Tony Dupé. Since the release of Saddleback's acclaimed 2004 debut Everything's A Love Letter, Tony has found increasing demand for his touch behind the recording desk, most notably with Sydney's Holly Throsby. Tony's recording desk for this record was located in his Kangaroo Valley residence on the south coast of New South Wales (he has since re-located to Berlin). The remote surroundings speak heavily of the sounds he creates for Saddleback, and as its title suggests, Night Maps has a darker sense of beauty than its predecessor. The uncanny atmospheres are the result of contrasting feelings at play. Sounds push and pull against each other, then unite into a mysterious force that is by turns desolate, fragile, visceral and translucent. These abstracted orchestrations featuring guitar, strings, woodwinds, brass, percussion and electronic textures work in the cracks between jazz, folk, post-rock and classical, claiming a space between dark and light, both shimmering and haunting. Night Maps is breathtaking, artful work. Deluxe packaging in a unique design.
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PRE 009CD
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2006 release. The Preservation label presents Almond, the debut album from Kansas multi-instrumentalist Aaron Martin. Martin started learning to play cello at the relatively late age of 17. His minimal, austere playing style remains a hallmark of his sound, having added a spectrum of instrumentation and a looper pedal to take his pieces into a more kaleidoscopic realm. On Almond, you'll hear guitar, lap steel, banjo, piano, ukelele, flute, toys and many more instruments and sound sources alongside the cello. Everything on Almond is played by Aaron, except for one solitary sample. His experimental-collage style builds loops into beguiling song forms of folkish charm and emotional resonance -- similar to the uncanny pop sensibility fostered by acts such as The Books, Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control. In their mesmerizing way, they ring in the brain like a partially-faded memory that stays with you, gradually revealing itself in full. Almond swells with joy, melancholy and whimsy in a kind of warm chemistry that's hard to pin down. Limited edition special package design.
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